What will addition of Alter, Flannigan bring to Austin City Council?

Saturday

With the swearing-in Friday evening of Alison Alter and Jimmy Flannigan, two more liberal members have joined the Austin City Council to consider issues that could chart the city’s course for decades.

District 6 voters decided in November to replace conservative Don Zimmerman with Flannigan, who campaigned promising to be a more conciliatory presence at City Hall. Meanwhile, in a December runoff, District 10 voters ousted Sheri Gallo in favor of Alter, who vowed to take a more critical line on new West Austin development.

RELATED: Live coverage from the council’s swearing-in ceremony

Alter and Flannigan will join a council confronting a list of challenges in 2017: overhauling the city’s development regulations that will shape and guide its growth; searching for a new city manager; hiring a new police chief; tackling the city’s housing and traffic woes; dealing with a never-ending parade of zoning dramas; and fending off conservative state lawmakers 10 blocks north at the Capitol.

“Those are big, big, audacious conversations,” noted Mike Martinez, who served under the old seven-member council that left office at the end of 2014.

Mayor Steve Adler has also signaled interest in tackling several issues downtown, including addressing homelessness, developing the Waller Creek Linear Park and looking at a possible expansion of the Austin Convention Center.

Conservative minority diminished

Gallo’s and Zimmerman’s departures leave the council’s conservative minority much diminished. Even though liberals maintained an 8-3 edge on the last council, the more conservative members could depend on each other to secure the necessary second vote to bring an item up for debate.

The shift leaves District 8 Council Member Ellen Troxclair as the only remaining conservative, especially on fiscal issues.

Longtime Austin pollster Mark Littlefield said he suspected Troxclair’s fellow members wouldn’t shut her out in the cold, especially because they might need her vote on other issues that divide the council.

“I think I have been a well-reasoned and principled voice for fiscal responsibility, and maybe this voice is needed now more than ever,” Troxclair said. “As long as there’s an idea worth discussing, they’ll continue to allow a variety of ways to get to our mutual goals.”

The debate over the city’s property tax break for homeowners could be an example. In 2016, Gallo, Troxclair and Zimmerman led the charge to expand the homestead exemption from 6 percent to 8 percent and found allies in Adler — who had campaigned on affordability issues — and other representatives from homeowner-heavy parts of the city.

Ultimately, the measure passed on a 6-5 vote. Supporters have called for further phasing the exemption up to 20 percent over the next few years, but it’s unclear how the new council will proceed on that issue.

“In the first two years of 10-1 (10 district members and the mayor), there have been some changes in the council about how you count to six (votes), in order to get things done,” Littlefield said. “It’s going to be different, using Alison and using Jimmy to be part of those coalitions.”

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Troxclair remains hopeful.

“I don’t want to put words in their mouth, but I understand that affordability is a goal for both of the new members,” she said. “I hope that we can maintain that majority of support moving forward.”

Troxclair added: “I don’t think that things like the homestead exemption or affordability or utility rates are partisan issues.”

New debates over growth

The changing political coalitions might affect the upcoming fight over CodeNEXT, Austin’s rewrite of 1,300 pages of development rules, which would shape city growth for decades. City Hall has been girding for the forthcoming battle among developers, the business community, affordable housing advocates, density supporters and neighborhood groups over the proposal, which is scheduled for release this month.

While Flannigan has spoken supportively of the city’s efforts to promote density in the city’s core and along major corridors, Alter has expressed skepticism.

Martinez suggested that could influence the CodeNEXT debate, but Littlefield and Young suggested that Alter’s focus would be directed more towards projects planned for her West Austin district. Alter’s campaign win was fueled, in large part, by neighborhood opposition to two major projects planned for District 10: the recently approved Grove at Shoal Creek development and the redevelopment of the Austin Oaks office park.

Will meetings go more quickly?

Perhaps the most notable change, political observers said, will be the tenor and length of City Council debates after Zimmerman’s departure.

“Some parts of the council meetings are going to go more quickly now with Zimmerman not pulling every item,” Littlefield said, noting the former council member’s penchant for demanding debate on typically noncontroversial items on the consent agenda, which is normally approved on a single vote with little discussion.

At times, Zimmerman’s colleagues grew visibly frustrated with him: Adler publicly rebuked him for his treatment of city staff; tears welled up in District 2 Council Member Delia Garza’s eyes as she condemned him for suggesting a largely Hispanic group of students should get jobs and not take welfare; and his colleagues were stunned when he slipped language from a Satanic Temple website into a resolution calling for universal compassion.

“Zimmerman just enjoyed throwing hand grenades into the soup,” said Peck Young, a longtime political consultant who now directs the Center for Public Policy and Political Studies at Austin Community College. “And you don’t have that personality anymore.”

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